Are you one of those "I hate WalMart. They destroyed .... (fill in the blanks)" folks? Or are you one of those "I love WalMart. Their prices are so low" folks? I am sure there are more shades in the middle - though it's increasingly difficult to find those shades in the US nowadays. Most prefer to be either Black or White. It's easier on the brain I guess.

This is a required reading for you. It's simple, short sentences. Contains some numbers, but not a lot - you won't be overwhelmed. It will broaden your view on the topic. It's nice reading. If you are offended by the nature in which I am proceeding in this blog post, please just go else where. You don't have to convert everybody to your morality - wherever that stands.

If you are a Glenn Beck follower, I have no idea how you came accross this blog post. I did not know that you guys actually read stuff. Well done for you. You have taken your first step into a wider world. Read more. Read this, that, pro, con. Read and think. That's what that brain is for.

If you are a Obama worshipper, welcome. Please do not recite from his speeches, do not repeat his name multiple times and try to keep your enthusiasm under control. He's just a human being like the rest of us and he will fail, like most of us. He, has nothing to do with WalMart, though.

Cheerios

http://mises.org/story/2219

'SixthSense' is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

At first it will feel like "one of those useless" things. Please scroll down the page and watch the first video. Pranav is a terrible speaker and boring at some times. So the first 6 minutes are sort of excruciating Please skip to minute 6 and just keep watching from that point on.

I salute thee Pranav Minstry; well done. This is one of the most exciting things of the decade and it actually works. Even as a prototype, it is functioning well enough to sell. You, my dear sir, have secured your future as a billionaire; well done indeed.

http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

I'd like to paint a small picture for us (RIP Bob Ross).

Search - nothing interesting. So they indexed huge amount of pages.
Map - nothing interesting. So they have maps of all the cities down to street level.
Combine search and map: Himm, nice. so I search for hat and it shows the nearest hat shop.

A device with Internet connection can connect to google over a browser. Search + map, becomes an integrated part of your "real" life all of a sudden.

If your device has GPS search + map + gps suddenly becomes an integral part of your "real life". You can practically replace your eyes with your device and google's services combined with an accurate GPS is purely magical.

Imagine you are handicapped. A PLC + a transformator and your wheelchair can go to places by itself. No artifical intelligence required. (yes, technical limitations pending)

We're still on search + map by the way.

Street view was a nice toy. Nobody actually paid attention to it, unless they got their pictures taken with their robes untied in the patio bent over picking up the newspaper. Combine map + gps + search + street view; Google now provides the best navigation experience that can be imagined.

Advertising, yes, but not just Internet and web site. Imagine Google said "pay $10 a month and I'll make your shop's building glow and blink and I'll show a rotating logo of your company on top of it on street view and every time somebody drives by I'll make google maps point your location and show your daily discounts in a balloon.

Here's one more fancy step that is unbeatable. Imagine Google, after a simple compilation provided a service that actually told you what type of businesses will work in a geographical location? This neighborhood has a huge population of individuals that constantly search for "this type of product" and added a number of purchases that went through their payment system to this. OK, they are not leader, but, just imagine the implications. (still nothing bad, nothing evil, just having a curious george time here). Who else can do this? Who else can even come close? Yahoo? Bing?

I want to continue, but the facilities and the products are never ending. Just keep in mind that "data" and "information" are not the same thing. We sort of know what type of information Google has across the board. But Google also has an indescribable amount of data at its disposal. Even they don't know how to tap into this 100% yet. With each service they add, each product they launch new types of data is accumulating. I just mumbled a few that everybody knows.

Yes Droid does, but what. Quite possibly more, much, much more than anybody has ever dreamed of.

Maybe I am overplaying it. Though I am having the time of my life. As I was there when Lycoss was launched, AltaVista amazed us, Excite was exciting, Yahoo was just an index. Yahoo is what, a media conglomerate? a news corporation? You? You can define Yahoo. More and more, I am finding it very hard to define Google. And that ladies and gentlemen, is what grinds my gears.

Back to you Tom

I was reading this blog from Google.

Google Code Blog: Introducing Google Public DNS: A new DNS resolver from Google

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/12/introducing-google-public-dns-new-dns.html

With this move, please correct me if I am wrong, they have pretty much covered everything that can be covered "softly" regarding the infrastructure of the Internet. The only thing they haven't done so far is to actually carry and route the data physically (as in operate cable, satellite)

I am guessing, by this time, the hands of Google over the "Internet land" is pretty much as big and long reaching as the hands of the government in "real land" (if not more). I am really curious, when will it be "too big, too much, one too many?"

I, personally, have no problem with Google providing online services; online products; cultivating, hiring talent and funding science projects to land on the moon; produce cell phone operating systems; caching, indexing, mapping, photographing, sensing, paying, directing, scanning, parsing, re-directing my online life. But still, one wonders...